If you like short stories that begin
something like, "Once upon a time, in a kingdom far, far away, in a
land where…" and then meander to their conclusion, or if you want to
hunker in on a snowy night with The Recognitions for light
reading, flash fiction is probably not for you. But if you want a
jolt, then you might have found your form. Sudden fiction, flash
fiction, micro fiction, smoke-long fiction, postcard fiction--all
are names for the short short fiction, seemingly designed especially
for online reading. Mark Budman, whose elegant quarterly VestalReview publishes a half-dozen flashes of 500 words or under
in each issue, says, "I love flash's intensity, its ability to say
much in little space, and, let's face it, its instant
gratification."

Like good
poetry, good flash provides not only gratification in the moment,
but as a result of its intensity, an emotional experience that
persists. It's analogous to what happens when you stare directly
into a flash bulb: an after-image floats for a while in your field
of vision.

Debi Orton publishes an online
magazine whose name, Flashquake, indicates the intensity of
the literature she publishes. Because she posts both poetry and
flash fiction, I asked her what she looks for in flash that she
doesn't ask of poetry. She answered, "First, narrative
drive. Because of its compressed universe, flash has to do a better
job of hooking the reader immediately and maintaining the reader's
interest throughout the story. Second, most good flash requires the
reader to make an investment in one or more characters. If the
reader can't empathize with the characters in the story, there's no
connection. Third is precision in describing environments and
situations."

Robert Shapard and James Thomas have
been working with what they've called sudden fiction for more than
two decades. Because they've been working with the form so long, I
asked them what role they thought the internet played in
popularizing the form. They called it a "synergy. Or a
synchronicity." Shapard said, "It's tempting to say the Internet has
been the main popularizer of flash and sudden but
that's not quite right. When we started researching 20 years ago,
very few print magazines ran short-short fiction. When they did it
was usually gathered as a rare feature. But increasingly, well
before the Internet boom, hundreds of print literaries began to run
short-short fiction not in features but as regular fare. Recently we
dug through nearly 500 print literary magazines, many through all
their issues for the last five years . . and found flashes
and suddens more popular in the print medium than ever. . .It
could be that the Internet is reflecting that, increasing that, and
even changing the very short forms--some might argue Internet
fiction is distinct, in a good way."

While the literary magazines ran
short shorts, so did some mass-market magazines for women. They ran
stories complete on two pages. I didn't realize at the time that I
was reading the wave of the future.

Shapard and Thomas draw a line at 750
words, above which they consider the story sudden fiction, and below
that flash. Others consider 1000 words the upper limit for flash,
but many online magazines set the upper limit at 500 words, while
others cap at 300. The form has a Drabble, (exactly 100
words--though some say 100 words or fewer), a 69er (69 words) and
what I consider to be the sonnet form of flash in its requirements
for structure, the 55er (ten lines, beginning with ten words, each
line with one fewer word, ending in one word--totaling fifty-five
words). For example, Sunset: Lake Erie

We stood on the beach, coarse sand
and smooth stones. Couples shifted position, keeping our distance
from each other.

While we waited, we chose water worn
stones. These we slipped into our jacket pockets. We warmed them
with our hands.

Impatient, we waited for sunset.
Foolish, wishing time away!

So we were. Green flash. Stone.

Flash and sudden fiction fiction are
limited by number of words, not by categories of content. When asked
about the relationship between prose poems and flash, Dave Clapper,
editor of the excellent SmokeLong Quarterly, which publishes flash
and interviews with the authors, said, "I don't really distinguish
between the two. Some flash pieces are definitely prose poems. Many
aren't. Prose poetry is just one of many valid writing styles, and
flash doesn't exclude any styles. I think even some straight poetry
could be considered flash."

Although flash is often associated
with literary fiction, flash includes genre fiction such as science
fiction, horror, romance, mystery and, yes, erotica. Clapper
dismisses the constraint of a surprise ending, to him flash, "is a
very open form, constrained by nothing more than word count and a
writer's imagination."

I asked James Thomas about the name
of flash, how he came to call it that, and he wrote the following,
"I'd been using short-shorts or very-shorts in teaching at
the UofU [Univeristy of Utah] for a couple of years, not really
calling them much of anything, cause they worked for that
purpose--but it wasn't until I found myself parked on a Greek Island
(thanks to an NEA), trying to write a novel, day after day and
having a hard time of it, that I decided to take a break for at
least for at least a day and try writing one of those
shorties myself. Never had before. To challenge myself a little more
I decided that it should be exactly 1,000 words. Of course it took
more than one day, for me, maybe because I knew exactly how I wanted
it to sound (a completely different voice from the novel), and I
knew everything that needed to happen (all but the actual ending, of
course, which I figure always has to find/grow itself). So, third !
day, it's hot and I'm sweating, figuratively and literally, counting
words, conniving, the door's open (I'd rented an apt. on a hill),
coming down on what I think is an ending, as a thin windy storm is
coming down on the sea below, and the sun is going down, setting,
I'm hungry, I'm thirsty, retsina maybe?, and yes by God I'm finding
that last little situation, those last words and the storm situation
is kicking up, thundering now and lightening, I've got denouement I
only need climax, God give me a last sentence of just the right
sound and shape, the sun is gone now, about sixteen words, and as
they (surprisingly) sort of suddenly slide out there is a total
illumination of the sky outside, bifurcating explosive tendrils of
light over the Med, and I swear to God (I personally go for Diana)
that my period goes down somewhere in the blast and then rumble of
thunder that follows a few seconds later. Flash? I don't know but it
was certainly cathartic.

"Or just an affect of
coincidence." That was 332 words. You get the idea.

Moss, Steve,
ed. The World's Shortest Stories: Murder, Love,
Horror, Suspense, All This and Much More in the most
Amazing Short Stories Ever Written, Each One Just 55
Worlds Long. Philadelphia: Running Press Book
Publishers, l998. 224 pages.

Moss, Steve,
John M. Daniel, John Daniel, Glen Starkey eds. The
World's Shortest Stories of Love and Death: Passion,
Betrayal, Suspicion, Revenge, All This and More in a New
Collection of Amazing Short Shorts--Each one Just 55
Words Long. Philadelphia: Running Press Book
Publishers, 2000. 223 pages.